In Her Skin(58)

I fumble with my key. With the lights off, the town house is eerie. The puppy runs to me and pounces at my feet. I grab her and stuff her in my shirt. Wolf appears in the door frame wearing his respirator, like something out of an apocalypse movie. His clothes are covered in plaster and he holds the duffel in one gloved hand. It sags with the weight of its contents. Beyond, I see the gash Wolf has chopped in the wall, and the ax on the floor, its blade powdered with plaster.

I stare at the duffel too long. Longer than we have.

“She’s inside?” I say.

Wolf nods, wild-eyed.

I gather my courage and shake off the fear. “Then we can go,” I say.

Wolf peels off his mask and heads for the front door.

“No!” I yell, and run up the stairs, and he follows me to my bedroom and out the window and onto the fire escape. “They’re right behind,” I huff, steadying the puppy squirming at my neck.

We stay in the alleys and the shadows and unlit storefronts, making our way across the city to the waterfront. It is far and hard and long, and we duck every time we hear sirens, and we hear sirens a lot. Wolf suffers under the weight of the duffel, under the weight of her bones, and I have to help, but I can’t help while holding the dog, and so I let her go. She follows us for a while until she can no longer keep up. I don’t look back at her, because if I do, I will stop, and there is no stopping. When I take the bag from Wolf, I am surprised at how much bones and hair and scraps of material weigh. When I slow, I imagine Vivi wanting us to go faster. I feel the pull of Vivi, the way she refused the fate the Lovecrafts had given her, biding her time until I came along to free her. “Don’t stop,” I hear her saying in her little-girl voice, and I run faster, am lighter, more agile, dodging the streetlamps and headlights that make us look like the fugitives we are. The first whiff of the ocean hits us as we get to the end of deserted State Street and cross the highway to Atlantic Avenue, exposed and broad, with no alleys and night workers in hard hats. It is the only way to Seaport Boulevard, but we get there, then cross to Northern Avenue with its accusing lampposts staring down upon us from both sides.

Wolf staggers, breathing hard. Maybe he has begun smoking again or is having a reaction to the plaster dust. Either way, he needs to move if we’re going to make it to the ship in time. We have no clothes, but we have stolen mad money and a bag full of bones that are enough evidence to keep the Lovecrafts from chasing me for the rest of my life. A turn onto Tide Street, then Drydock, and Wolf is nailed by a coughing spasm, and I yell for him to move ahead of me so I can push him along. When his hand dangles at his side, I see a flash of bright blood he coughed into his palm.

We reach the Black Falcon terminal just as the ship calls final check-in. We move through empty lines marked by velvet ropes. Fat couples belly up to the deck rails, too full of anticipation to show us much attention. I shove my tickets bought with money stolen from the Lovecrafts, my inheritance, into a bored man’s hand, along with our fake IDs. We are made to fill out a form promising we haven’t been sick lately. I kick Wolf to straighten up, and he shoves his bloody hand in his pocket. We look like a young couple crazed by the thought of missing our cruise, I tell myself. We ran into traffic on 93, I tell the man with a giggle. We are so psyched for this vacation. My husband needs it, he came straight from a carpentry job, didn’t even have time to change clothes. We would have been sooo bummed to miss our only vacation, in, like, forever!

Wolf puts his free hand on my hand holding the duffel. I was swinging it, hard, without realizing. I clear my throat.

The man points to a tiny camera where our pictures are taken and we are given “cruise cards” in the names of Patrice and Charlie Silver. Pretty names that I stare at a second too long. The cruise cards will get us into our room, and pay for our meals, and give us handy-dandy schedules of each day’s events, including Zumba and mah-jongg. But the Silvers will not leave their room. The Silvers (with their guest beside them) are going to sleep for a long time.

We scramble up the gangway and follow directions to our room, a crappy, tiny thing on the lowest deck. Wolf is pale and I want only to get him into a bed with a shower going to make steam. I know the TB cough from Tent City, and I know Wolf’s lungs, already weak from infections, will not stand up to it. When we turn the corner, I stop and feel his flaming forehead. I nearly knock him over. He falls to the bed and is asleep before I turn on the shower.

The duffel sits where I left it on the carpeted floor next to the door. Wolf breathes, wet and sticky.

“Okay then,” I whisper. “It’s just you and me. I want you to see something.”

I hoist the duffel onto my shoulder, wincing at the rattle of shifting bones inside, and close the cabin door softly behind me.

*

You’re wondering if I threw Vivi’s bones overboard.

It took me five sets of stairs and landings before I found a length of rail unoccupied by cruise-goers taking selfies and making clichéd remarks about the tiny lights of Boston Harbor and the black nighttime sea.

I opened the zipper partway and held up the bag. It was the first of many times that I have spoken to her since. “Can you see, Vivi? That’s the ocean. The real ocean, not the slice of it that you see from the beach. It’s a dark place that you can get lost in, which is exactly what we need right about now. I don’t know if you got to see it in your lifetime, but I’m pretty sure you did.